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Improvement objectives - a simple solution

By Ed Bones

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Published: 21May2009
Word count: 486
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With the publication of ISO9001:2008 auditors will be re-invigorated in their examination of management systems offered for audit and registration, although the actual changes introduced by the amended standard are minimal. Focus is almost certain to be on the improvement clauses of the standard, and the setting of objectives and performance measurement.

These objectives should be seen primarily as medium to long term aims of the organisation, and not as some suggest something to be achieved since the last audit visit. Holding on to this truth could save the client significant trauma at the time of the audit. Examples of objectives might be - the reduction of inventory, reduction of quality costs, improved return on capital employed; and for a design function a reduction in post design changes. These are all reasonable objectives at executive management level but the requirement is also for each facet of the company's business - each process - to be involved with the objectives, to have their own related quality objectives, and for these to be interrelated.

Objectives however require measurements to enable assessment of progress towards their achievement, and this is where many if not most organisations and their registrars fail to appreciate the difference. A direct consequence of this lack of understanding is a tendency for auditors to expect results from the objectives, and companies to believe that objectives are all that is required.

This topic of monitoring and measuring is scattered throughout the ISO9001 standard, so it is hardly surprising that it forms a focus of interest to auditors, since there is no technical or specialist knowledge required on their part to assess the existence of these system attributes. For the client company of course there remains the requirement to monitor and measure, and implicitly to link these to the corporate objectives.

Managers and their subordinates appear to approach the establishment of objectives and measurement indices in a manner entirely inconsistent with their normal management activity, and yet there is little difference in the requirements. Any well run business has an annual business plan - if only to satisfy its bankers when seeking finance. The business plan indicates where the directors of the company expect the company to be sometime in the future (their objectives) and, again perhaps for their bankers, they will define how they will measure progress towards these objectives. The same objectives should be used to satisfy the ISO compliance requirements. Tagging the ISO objectives with the prefix Quality - as in Quality objectives, has no particular meaning and should be ignored. Business objectives is what they are, and the operation of the business is how they are achieved.

Establishing business objectives that will satisfy the ISO standard requirements is therefore less difficult than the quality profession normally suppose, simply because objectives already exist. Just record the objectives and the progress towards them in the minutes of the management review and the job is done.

Ed. Bones is a chartered quality professional, an IRCA registered Lead Auditor, and is a senior partner with Meon Consulting Group, providing expert audit and consultant services for ISO9001 & ISO14001 management systems. The company web site provides detailed information, and includes the offer of FREE Advice.

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